Light the Shadows on Your Face
by melanie39
Summary: The Cohens struggle to know how to deal with Ryan after Marissa's death.


Thanks to Loracj for beating this for me, and to Fredsmith for being a sounding board.

**Light the Shadows on your Face**

Sandy has a hotline to the bar on the pier. Mike, the bartender, and he have an understanding.

* * *

They sit and eat, as a family, but no one can tell you what the food tastes like. They pass the bowls across the table to each other but nobody can tell you what's in them. They don't ask how everybody's day has gone. The phone doesn't ring because who would be calling? Ryan is always the first to finish; his plate pushed away, food cold and discarded. Kirsten will glance at Sandy and Sandy will urge him to eat more and Ryan will scowl and stand up, pick up his plate and head for the trash can.

They watch him as he pulls out the loose change he has in his pocket and leaf through the bills and Seth looks desperately at Sandy begging him to say something, anything, to stop him. And when he says he's eighteen and he can do what the fuck he likes, Seth and Kirsten look on, upset, and Sandy knows he should be cruel to be kind and yell back at him that if that's how he feels, then he can get the hell out of the house until he sorts himself out. But this is Ryan we're talking about, and neither he, nor Kirsten, nor Seth can do that to him. So instead, they let him go and they wait each night for Mike's call.

* * *

Sandy lies beside a rigid Kirsten, fully dressed, and when the call comes, they count down the minutes. On a good night they'll hear him stumble across the patio, past the pool (which Kirsten has had drained and if he's noticed, he hasn't said anythingand they'll hear him fumble with the pool house lock and the door slam behind him. Then Kirsten will let out the breath she doesn't know she's been holding and shut her eyes and fall into an uneasy sleep, and Sandy will pull off his shoes and lie back and stare at the ceiling. On a bad night, Sandy or Seth, but usually both of them, will trudge to the car, get in, drive to the beach and haul him off the life guard tower. Nobody speaks because what is there to say? And besides, Ryan has gone past the drunk, argumentative, belligerent stage and he's pretty much at the drunk, comatose stage, so what would be the point?

* * *

One morning Kaitlin delivers a collection of Marissa's belongings her mom thinks Ryan should have. They're stored in one of those brown cardboard boxes, like the ones Kirsten has stored in the garage, the ones she'd been collecting for the boys to use for college, way before Seth told them he hadn't got into Brown, a lifetime before Sandy called Paul Glass and got Ryan's entry to Berkeley deferred indefinitely. She knows she should pass the box onto Ryan but she doesn't and she takes it to her room and tucks it away at the back of her closet. She tells Seth about it, and one day that summer they pull it out, sit together on her bed and empty its contents.

There's not much, and what there is seems to Seth an incongruous mix of memories, even to him, and he and she were never really close. But Ryan is his friend and he knows that one day his mother will tell him she has this stuff and Seth wantsto be a step ahead, prepared, because he sure as hell wasn't prepared for what happened the night after graduation and he never wants to feel that helpless again.

So he picks up the picture of the four of them leaning against the car, a couple of months after Summer first started to acknowledge him, and Ryan, Marissa and Summer are smiling because it was before all that shit with Oliver and Theresa and Trey and Johnny, and they looked really happy, and Seth can't understand why this had to happen to the two people, aside from his parents, he loves the most in his life.

Kirsten picks up the small white box and opens it, puzzled. The necklace lays nestled in carefully folded white tissue paper and she remarks that she'd never seen Marissa wear it and she wonders aloud why it's there. But Seth knows, and he recalls that Valentine's Day where he and Ryan trailed around the mall looking for something, anything that Ryan could give her in his last gasp attempt to salvage what was left of their relationship, because as he said, shouldn't actions speak louder than words? And Kirsten shuts the box again, her eyes prickling at the revelation of how hard he'd tried to make it work and the starker revelation too, that she, the closest thing he has to a mother, had had no idea.

Sandy rests his head against the doorframe and watches his wife and his son repack the small collection from a life barely lived, and wonders if the life inexplicably linked to it will ever fare any better.

* * *

One afternoon, in early September, Ryan wakes up, the late summer sunshine streaming through the cracks of the pool house blinds, warming his face. His head is hammering and he screws his eyes up to protect himself from the throbbing. The box is sitting there on the bed, at the point where his feet are poking out of the loose covers. A note sits beside it and even though he wants to curl up and sleep off the pounding in his head, he doesn't. Kirsten's words are brief and to the point, and after he's read them, he pulls up his feet and sits cross legged and looks at the box.

* * *

Mike's call comes early that night. Kirsten answers and passes the receiver to Sandy wordlessly. Seth watches the look between them as he sits on the couch, holding the PlayStationcontroller in one hand and his knee firmly in the other.

* * *

Ryan is grateful to Julie. He fingers the soft fur and smiles. He thinks that if he were the parent of a dead child, that he could never give this up, that this would be the one thing he'd want to keep close, always, and he knows what this means, he knows what she's telling him, even if she can't bring herself to face him herself.

He heaves himself up from the sand and dusts down his jeans. He places the photos and the necklace in the backpack, he tucks the CD, his name scribbled across the plastic box, in the side pocket, he squashes the cardboard box and dumps it in the trashcan.

He arrives at the Roberts' house, clad in darkness and fetches the key from its hiding place. He walks up the stairs towards Summer's room. He walks over to her nightstand and picks up the plastic horse with the turquoise mane, places it on her bed and tucks up the purple bear next to it. He scribbles a note, glances briefly at the doorway to the adjoining room, and leaves.

He walks up the driveway and Sandy is there, keys in hand, and he stops and smiles and all he says is "thanks". He keeps walking, round the side of the house and into the pool house. He switches on the lamp and trots up the steps. He opens his closet and stores the backpack safely away. He walks back down, out of the doors, and across the patio. He goes into the kitchen and nods to Kirsten who has parked herself at thetable and is deep in her crossword. He takes two bottles of water from the refrigerator. He walks through to the family room and joins Seth on the floor. Wordlessly, he passes one of the bottles to Seth. Seth hands him the other Playstation controller.

Sometimes, Seth knows, things are better left unsaid. But then again, he's never been very good at that.

"So Ryan, what exactly are you implying when you leave a note telling my girlfriend that Share Bear will never let Princess Sparkle down?"

And Ryan grins and picks up Captain Oats and thinks maybe, just maybe, he _will_ make it to Berkeley after all, just like she promised.

The End


End file.
